Carrie Beach
Design Thinking, with People at the Center
Organized Mess App
This app was created to give artist and crafters an easy way to inventory their creative supplies and track their projects.
The Problem
Many crafters and artists who work with a wide range of materials end up collecting an overwhelming amount of supplies. However, there’s no simple way for them to keep track of what they already own. As a result, they often buy duplicates, spend too much time searching through cluttered drawers and bins, and lose valuable creative time. Without an easy system for organizing and inventorying their supplies, crafting can quickly shift from inspiring to frustrating.
The goal of this project was to give crafters and artists a single, organized place to manage a supply inventory and plan and journal details about their projects. The app is designed to automatically check the user’s existing inventory when a new project journal is created, helping them quickly see what they already have on hand. It can also suggest substitutions using supplies they already own or add any missing items to a shopping list. Overall, the aim was to streamline the creative process by reducing duplicate purchases, minimizing searching, and supporting more efficient project planning and documentation.
The Goal
My Role
As the UX designer for this project, I was responsible for all steps of the design process to create a efficient and user friendly method to inventory art and craft supplies and record projects:
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identify user needs and existing solutions to the problem of organization and documentation
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determine product features including navigation, interaction design, and information architecture
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perform user and usability research as the app progresses from planning to completion
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develop wireframes and prototypes for the app
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create the UI for the final app design
Design Process
Empathy
Determine user needs and pain points related to currently available apps
Define
Determine goals for the app including product features
Ideate
Develop information architecture and interaction design to be used in the app
Design
Prototype
Design interface and navigation
Create the visual design
Empathy
As a crafter myself, I encounter the problem of being overwhelmed by the number of supplies that I own and have bought duplicates of supplies by accident several times. I decided to build my app around this problem because I know other crafters and artists also face this issue.
The group of people I used for user surveys and usability studies were friends from a local makerspace and family members who are crafters. These people work across a wide range of art and craft mediums and have a wide variety and large number of supplies.
At the beginning of my research, I created a survey that explored several key areas: the types of supplies they own, how they currently track their materials, how they plan and develop projects, and which challenges they find most frustrating when managing their inventory or selecting new project ideas. ​In addition to collecting survey responses, I spoke individually with each participant to gather deeper context and clarify patterns that emerged in the data.
Overall, the research showed that participants engage in many different creative mediums and share a common need for a simpler, more efficient way to maintain an accurate inventory of their supplies. This confirmed a strong interest in a solution that could streamline organization, support project planning, and reduce the time spent searching for materials.
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Competitive Analysis
I also completed competitive research to determine the types of apps that are currently available on the market. I found that while there are apps that do inventory materials or journal projects, they are craft specific. I found organization apps for paper crafting, yarn arts, and painting miniatures. I also learned that people use general inventory apps, such as Evernote and Sortly, to maintain a database of their supplies, but those apps don’t allow for project documentation.
I utilized reviews on the apps in order to get user feedback on the features of each of the apps. Overall, users liked the ability to categorize their supplies, the ability to add supplies by bar code or picture, and the use of tags to easily locate specific items. Users disliked the exclusion of specific brands from some apps that provide a pre-populated inventory, the inability to personalize lists or categories of supplies, and the fact you had to purchase a subscription to use the full functions of an app.
Color My World
My Craft Stuff
paintRack
Smarty Paints
Define
Based on user survey and competitive research, I determined that the app should give crafters and artists a single, organized place to manage their wide range of supplies and document planning and progress on projects. Overall, the aim is to streamline the creative process by reducing duplicate purchases, minimizing searching, and supporting more efficient project planning.
Features
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Ability to create an inventory of supplies on hand by entering current supplies using a photo, bar code scan, or manual entry
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Ability to plan and document creative projects
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Ability to check the user’s existing inventory when a new project journal is created
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Suggestions of substitution supplies that are already owned when a project is created or the ability to add any missing items to a shopping list
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Ideate
Site Map
The main content on the app is divided into three sections: inventory/supply categories, project documentation/journal, and settings. I felt it would be useful to have the inventory categories further split into subcategories to narrow down the choices that will be displayed when looking at the supply list. Users are able to search the app for supplies and projects. They are also given the option to add projects and supplies, including adding multiple supplies at one time.
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There is also a portion of the app that will introduce the user to the app and help them setup their desired display settings, setup supply locations, and begin to populate their supply inventory.
User Flow
After discussions with my test users, I decided to include an option to ask for substitution supplies for missing supplies when creating a new project. The user will be able to approve the suggestion or continue to search if they don't like the initial suggestion. Within this flow, users also have the ability to add missing supplies to a shopping list. I felt that giving these options will give the user the most options when it comes to using the supply search.
Since users will need to enter all of their supplies when they start using the app, I decided to include a function to add multiple supplies at once. The user will have the option to add a single supply or add multiple at one time. This option will also be available for adding locations from the introduction tour since the location list will not be populated when people start using the app.
Design
Wireframes
While creating the design, I focused on the structure of my app. I created common pages such as add supply and projects and the homepage, but plan to give users the options to select a tile or list layout as well as light and dark settings. My users recommended these options based on their preferences in apps that they currently use.
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I created paper wireframes for each of the other pages of the app. I decided to do a list and tile version of the inventory category, subcategory and project journal pages to give users the ability to select the version that they prefer. I have include the wireframes for the project journal portion of the app.
Low Fidelity Prototype
Testing
I utilized feedback from my users throughout the course of developing the app. After the initial survey, I used a usability survey and personal interviews to gather feedback. The feedback helped me to determine the layout of the introduction/tour for the app and they basic layout of the navigation structures on each screen.
They also gave feedback on the category and subcategory structure of the app. Since many of them own a large variety of supplies, they suggested creating lists within the various categories of art and craft supplies.